Brooks Laich says the Caps have a system

Brooks Laich and Matt Bradley appeared on TSN's Off the Record Tuesday evening, which is sort of the sports network's lighthearted evening show, minus the heads-on-sticks, orange hue and fear of the future. There was a bunch of hockey talk, but an attempt to come at it from a lighthearted way, which is how Bradley and Laich came to be asked whether the Capitals actually have an offensive system or are just sort of winging it.

"Yeah, for sure," Bradley said. "I mean, [Bruce Boudreau's] a real good Xs and O's guy. But the one good thing with him is with the way our team is, he lets the offensive guys like myself and Brooks do our thing. A lot of dangling."

"Toe dragging," Laich added, and then turned marginally serious. "You know what, we do have a system, believe it or not. Maybe sometimes you don't see it. I think when other teams scout us, they say 'Well, we're gonna scout the third and fourth lines, because they play the system and the first two lines are a little different.' But you know what, [Boudreau's] a very structured guy, and when we do play well, it's because we do play the system. And then you mix our skill in with that, and then we're able to win hockey games."

The segment concludes with these quick hitting questions, which really work a lot better as video rather than text, but TSN isn't into embeddable video. And because I'm trying to mention the word "poutine" a certain number of times, I'm gonna proceed, because the first question was whether the team went for smoked meat or poutine on Monday night.